*The Bangor, Maine Daily News on Paul dealing with his
bad polls in Florida by
campaigning in Maine:

Declaring the “freedom movement alive and well,” Republican
presidential candidate Ron Paul kicked off a two-day statewide tour
in Bangor on Friday with the hope of convincing enough delegates to
support him at Maine’s caucuses, which begin next weekend.

Paul, the 76-year-old Congressman from Texas, is the only
current GOP candidate who has yet to win a state’s primary or
caucus, but he has been racking up delegates in many states and
hopes to continue that trend in Maine.

“We came where the action is, in Maine,” he said to raucous
applause from about 300 people packed inside the Union Street Brick
Church in downtown Bangor. “We came to get delegates and that’s the
name of the game. That’s how you win elections.

“We deal in ideas and very important ideas, but I’ve also
discovered that the best way to promote ideas is to win elections,
too.”

During a 30-minute speech, Paul touched on a number of his
campaign themes including personal freedoms, limited government and
ending U.S. involvement in foreign wars…..

He stressed his preference to repeal the Patriot Act and his
opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act.

“The Internet is the weapon of liberty as far as I’m concerned,”
he said.

He also said he thinks airport security scanners are a
government overreach in the wake of Sept. 11.

“These are illegal, unconstitutional searches of our bodies
where it doesn’t make us any safer whatsoever,” he said. “That we
need to change.”…..

Paul is the only candidate to visit Maine so far in 2012…

*Former GE CEO Jack Welch and wife Suzy are getting into the
weeds of GOP power plays by calling on Ron Paul to drop out, while
also noting the GOP must be sure he doesn’t go away mad because of
the power of his fans and ideas–and admit
all their kids are Ron Paul people.

*Sarah Palin
tells John Stossel that Ron Paul “is the only one who has
been so adamantly passionate about doing something about the
suffocating debt, about doing something about reining in government
growth and actually slashing budgets – $1 trillion a year, he’s
been specific about until we get our hands around this – I respect
that.”

*John Hudson at The Atlantic notices a mainstream media

Paul blackout back in effect:

After a
brief spike in interest, the mainstream media coverage of GOP
candidate Ron Paul is back to nearly nothing, according to the Pew
Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. This
week, less than 5 percent of all campaign stories focused on Paul,
the lowest point since Dec. 11. when strong performances in Iowa
and New Hampshire helped stoke some interest. Over the same period,
Paul’s performance in the polls has only improved, going from the
single digits to 12.7 percent, putting him nearly even with Rick
Santorum, in
the current RealClearPolitics average.

But in Pew’s weekly
study, Paul has been heading in the opposite direction.
Pew tracks a list of 52 mainstream news outlets across
broadcast television, cable news, newspapers, radio and the 12 most
popular news sites to measure exposure. As you can see from the
graph below, the downward trajectory of coverage volume has been
steep for Paul, as the star of New Gingrich rose following his
decisivevictory in
South Carolina and strong
polling in Florida.   

Ron Paul’s (pretty uniformly great) debate performance last
night, mostly just the Ron Paul parts (and some of the others
riffing off of Ron):

 

My forthcoming book,
Ron Paul’s Revolution.